Innholdsfortegnelse for May 21, 2025 i Country Life

Quiz of the week 1) Cardinal Wolsey gave which palace to Henry VIII in 1529? 2) Which planet in our solar system has the most extreme axial tilt? 3) What were Starburst fruit-flavoured sweets called before they were rebranded in 1998? 4) Which species of kite breeds in Britain? 5) Which composer’s skull was stolen from his coffin? 1) Hampton Court Palace 2) Uranus 3) Opal Fruits 4) Red 5) Joseph Haydn. Riddle me this: An umbrella Riddle me this What is able to go up a chimney when down, but is unable to go down a chimney when up? Time to buy On this day… May 21, 1917 The Imperial—today, the Commonwealth—War Graves Commission was established by Royal Charter to give dignified burial to the First World War (and…

THE writer Richard Doddridge (R. D.) Blackmore (1825–1900) was, in his time, a leading figure in the rise of the English novel during the Victorian age, yet only his best-known book, Lorna Doone (1869), endures and is probably rarely studied to the same degree as those of his friends Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. However, Blackmore’s colourful tale of enduring love and revenge, which was compared at the time to the works of Sir Walter Scott and said to be a favourite of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, still has deep resonance on Exmoor where it is set. It has done for the area what Wuthering Heights has for the Yorkshire moors and spawned a creative tourist industry that capitalises on the tale of the marauding Doone family, whose kingdom was…

NINE o’clock, 200 yards!’ yells the lookout on the flying bridge. There they were, a maelstrom of bluefin tuna crashing into baitfish, scimitar tails scything the water, every fish more than 100lb. It was all slightly unreal. Apart from conger eels, common skate and some shark species, we don’t expect to catch monsters in British seas. Big-game fishing is associated with warm waters, Hawaiian shirts, Bermuda shorts and a rum-punch sundowner. Yet, here were scores of tuna in Falmouth Bay, Cornwall, on a grey October day. We were aboard Sailfish, a 34ft specialist big-game boat owned and skippered by Peter Hyde and crewed by Mark Gibbens and Pip Earl. When ashore, Mr Hyde grows Christmas trees, Mr Gibbens has a country-side management company and Mr Earl is a builder in…

SECOND only to our eagles in size, with a wingspan of 5½ft, the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is among this country’s most impressive birds. The signature drama attached to its name is considered one of the most awe-inspiring sights in all of British Nature. Ospreys are fish-eating and known to catch a wide variety of species, such as trout and salmon, but also pike, grey mullet, carp and even flounder. The hunting scenario unfolds with a bird hovering sometimes nearly 100ft above a river or lake, where it shifts angle and elevation until it locks with laser-like acuity onto the prey below. That triggers a long lunging dive, when the wings stretch behind the body like the fins on some blunt-tipped missile. With enormous force, the bird plunges under and then…

Visit Tottering-By-Gently on our website: www.countrylife.co.uk/tottering We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. The paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic standards. All contents © 2025 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future…

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk COW and sheep burps receive a bad press. Often, the statistics associated with British ruminants’ wind and its environmental consequences are conflated with those from the parts of the world where it does more damage owing to the intensive systems deployed in livestock rearing. As a result, there is a prevailing notion in some quarters that all domestic animals represent the desecration of the planet. Farmers are being pressured to de-stock the landscape, even when the presence of a reasonable number of those animals, including pigs, geese, goats and ponies, are integral to the national aim of biodiversity recovery. The appalling revelations from a mega pig farm in Lincolnshire (Agromenes, page 115) do nothing for Britain’s…

Pioneering patron IT was wonderful to see Turner’s Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight (‘Trip the light fantastic’, April 23). This painting was commissioned by my great-great-great grandfather Henry McConnel as a companion to Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore. Known as ‘the pioneer of art collecting in Lancashire’, Henry was obliged to sell the paintings at a time of business adversity and tried (unsuccessfully) to buy at least one of them back in 1861. He was an avid patron and collector of Turner’s works, with some bequeathed by his daughter to Manchester galleries and some sold on the winding up of his grandson’s widow’s estate—unfortunately, none has made it down to our generation! Michael Worthington, by email Dancing dogs YOU brought back an embarrassing memory of my terrier…

IT seems restrictive to judge the Cornish coastline by its figures alone. The vital statistics are clear enough—it stretches for 422 miles, reaches heights of 732ft (at High Cliff, above Rusey Beach) and includes more than 300 beaches—but the reality is even more epic and unbound. This is a serpentine land-meets-seascape of ancient inlets and tumbling waves, of rearing cliffs and sun-caught spindrift, of smugglers’ caverns and soft sands, of winds that roar off the ocean and headlands that stand immutable. Cornwall is a promontory that invites awe. Even in an age when modern phenomena, such as overtourism and Instagram, can remould elements of a place, there’s something undiminishable about these bays and contours. It’s a part of the country that speaks to different people in different ways—you could ask…

STROLL down any country lane and England’s green and pleasant land is alive with colour. So observed poet and patron of all things bucolic John Clare, who revelled in the weeds and wildflowers British meadows have to offer. Indeed, he devoted a sonnet to one. Senecio jacobaea might be a ‘humble flower with tattered leaves’, but, for Clare, its bright-yellow buds ‘litter gold’ over fields and verges with a potency that turns sunshine to ‘paleness’, as he proclaims in The Ragwort of 1832. The genus Senecio, derived from the Latin for ‘old man’, implies a kindly, whiskered plant bending in the breeze—and whiskered it is. The white, downy pappus is the key to its dispersal on the wind of anywhere from a few hundred to many thousands of seeds per…

The British Imagination: A History of Ideas from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II Peter Watson (Simon & Schuster, £30) THE former journalist Peter Watson has form when it comes to probing a nation’s psyche. His earlier books include The French Mind and The German Genius, charting the intellectual lives of Britain’s closest counterparts—and oldest enemies. Now, he has turned his attention to The British Imagination, beginning in one Elizabethan era and ending in another. It is an ambitious and often stimulating book, albeit not without moments of haste and, indeed, omission. Mr Watson opens by clarifying why Britain’s capital was more powerful than almost all its equivalents: London was both a court and a port. With Elizabeth I on the throne, ‘the living focus of her father’s break with Rome,…

I HAVE often heard it said that people don’t enjoy their own wedding. The stress, the consensus seems to be, is so overwhelming that the day passes in a blur of Champagne and anxiety. It is true that things can go wrong—at a wedding in Surrey, I witnessed the break up of a long relationship when two (at-that-point married) people were caught canoodling behind the marquee. At another in Devon, there was a scuffle after a guest unwisely tried to kiss the bride’s mother. My own wedding a fortnight ago was entirely without incident. Two six year olds did fight (over a water pistol) and blood was drawn, but other than that, it was a wonderful day. My only sadness is that it is over; Constance and I cannot get…

KILLING piglets by throwing them against a wall is disgraceful and wholly illegal. The filmed evidence of this behaviour at a mega-farm owned by meat producer Cranswick rightly shocked the food industry when it was published last week. The immediate and unanimous response of the supermarkets was to stop trading with the farm concerned. That was not only a responsible reaction, but it showed that all supermarkets saw exactly how damaging the revelation could be to their own reputations. Most people rely on the big chains’ commitments to food safety and animal-welfare standards. If products are sold in Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda or Morrisons, in the Co-op or Iceland or by the discounters Lidl or Aldi, we feel that they will be safe and properly sourced. For the most part, they…

The Old House, Dorset The home of Charles and Jane Montanaro THE OLD HOUSE, framed by tall trees and a meandering stream, stands in extensive gardens on the edge of the village of Milton on Stour. It’s a handsome historic building and notable today for a remarkable series of decorative plaster ceilings. Unexpectedly, however, these are not the inheritance of centuries past, but an addition of the current owners, Charles and Jane Montanaro. Their aim was to commission original ceilings that would be in sympathy with the age and character of the house and also reflect its landscape setting and the surrounding presence of Nature. Inspiration for the new plasterwork ceilings owes something to COUNTRY LIFE. Jane Montanaro—who works as a filmmaker under the name Jane Treays—directed two documentaries about…

CORNISH boat-builder Jonny Nance has worn a gansey every day for most of his life. ‘They’re fairly tight-fitting, so they don’t get caught in what you’re doing,’ he explains. ‘There are no pockets or buttons to snag on a net and they work well at sea, allowing you to steam rather than sweat.’ He cares deeply about maritime history: when not at work, he builds replicas of the Victorian fishing vessels that were once a common sight in his home town of St Ives, as a means of honouring seafaring traditions. ‘You could say the gansey tells the same story,’ he adds. Also known as the guernsey, jersey and knit-frock, the gansey is a traditional fisherman’s sweater originating in the Channel Islands—hence the name—in the 17th century and still produced…

Pick of the crop Outdoor cushions…

The garden at Stavordale Priory, Somerset The home of Michael Le Poer Trench and Sir Cameron Mackintosh THERE are obvious comparisons to be made between a good garden and a long-running theatrical production. Both set scenes that come together in a coherent, absorbing narrative and are filled with cast members that will mature into their roles over time. The analogy is particularly apt in the case of Stavordale Priory in Somerset, where Michael Le Poer Trench and Sir Cameron Mackintosh, the world-famous theatre producer, have lived since 1994. Here, Mr Le Poer Trench has taken on an existing garden to develop many exquisite and romantic visual vignettes, now covering some 16 acres of formal areas, woodlands and ponds. The priory was previously owned by David and Georgia Langton and Mr…

IN Cornish, tre means place or farmstead and vast numbers of villages are prefixed by these three letters in the county of my birth. It’s a naming convention almost exclusive to the west bank of the Tamar River. We stayed at Tregothnan cottages, a tre of particular beauty set on the banks of the River Fal, inland from St Mawes and the Roseland Peninsula. The eight dog-friendly cottages—which once formed a small trading port—are dotted around the inlet offering views of the creek’s twinkling water and the estate’s tea plantations, of which more later. Penjerrick Cottage is simple, beautiful and homely, but bring your own pillows unless you like a boulder to sleep on. The quiet was punctuated by calls from curlew and shoveler ducks and hoots of tawny owls…